Ulrike Marie Meinhof (October 7, 1934 - May 9, 1976) was a German radical left-wing militant who started out as a journalist.
Born in Oldenburg, she was one of the founders of the Red Army Faction (in German: Rote Armee Fraktion), which is also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group.
Early on, she became involved in the anti-nuclear movement and was an editor for the radical left paper konkret. She married Klaus Rainer Rhl, a communist, in 1961 and had twin girls, Bettina and Regine, on September 21, 1962.
Divorced in 1968, she became involved with more radical people in Berlin. In 1970, increasingly frustrated with ordinary means of struggle employed by the left-wing, or lack of the same, she helped Andreas Baader to escape from prison and then took part in bank robberies and bombings of industrial sites and American military bases. The group was quickly dubbed "The Baader-Meinhof Gang" by the German press. Meinhof wrote many of the tracts and manifestos that the group produced, including the concept of the urban guerrilla, decrying what she called the exploitation of the common man and the imperialism of the capitalist system.
Captured in 1972 in Langenhagen, she was, during "preliminary hearings", sentenced to 8 years imprisonment. While on a trial that would have given her life imprisonment, she was found dead in her cell at JVA Stuttgart-Stammheim on May 9, 1976, hanging from the ceiling. The German government claimed she had hanged herself, a claim that was supported by a governmental inquiry panel. Many people, including members of the Red Army Faction have always held that she was killed by representatives of the German authorities.
In 2002, it was revealed that Meinhof's brain had been removed without the family's consent, and research carried out on it. Bernhard Bogerts, a psychiatrist from the University of Magdeburg, claimed that a brain operation undergone by Meinhof in the 1960s may have contributed to her radicalization. [1]

Nov 30, 2006

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